Fairfield-Suisun school board urged to bring back music

With some audience members holding green and orange signs reading "It's Elementary! Music for our Children," more than a dozen speakers on Thursday urged Fairfield-Suisun Unified leaders to restore funding for more music instruction in the district's elementary schools.

Meeting in district offices on Hilborn Road, trustees heard students, parents, teachers and music instructors essentially say the same thing: find the money to pay for it, because music instruction needs to begin in the primary grades; and it boasts many spinoff benefits, among them increased academic achievement, especially in math and reading.

After listening to several speakers, many citing studies that show direct relationships between the teaching of music and improved outcomes on high-stakes assessment tests, Superintendent Kristin Corey said, "There's not a member on our board who doesn't value music."

In recent years, reeling from a $40 million budget slash brought on by the Great Recession and the state's housing implosion, the district eliminated or reduced many programs, including elementary music, laying off music teachers.

But Corey, who reviewed past board meeting minutes, noted "an interest" among the seven trustees "to bring back certain programs," adding that, for the first time in nearly six years, there are opportunities to restore programs because of increased state revenues brought on, in part, by the voter-approved taxes-for-schools Proposition 30.

She appeared to suggest that the board's collective desire is to fully restore music, physical education and arts programs but "it will take some time" before they are made whole.

Corey noted that the district, Solano County's largest with some 22,000 students, is on the verge of qualifying for additional state money -- so-called "concentration grants" -- because 53 percent of students are low-income, English language learners or foster children. The state threshold is 55 percent to qualify for additional funding.

Rodriguez High student Noah Shaw, 16, credited his straight A's with early music instruction.

A another speaker, tears streaming down her cheek as she spoke, told the trustees that her daughter struggled with reading in the primary grades, but, after moving to Fairfield and entering her elementary school's music program, she eventually began to read at grade level and is currently earning a 4.0 GPA.

"Music makes a difference in students' lives," she said.

Speaker Alicia Partlow of Fairfield said, "When you play music, you have such a wonderful feeling in your heart. If you have any money, restore the music program" in the elementary grades.

Fairfield resident Mayrene Bates, noting that she grew up in an impoverished part of the South, said memories of a boy playing piano in her high school are what she recalls when she thinks of her teenage years.

"Find a way to provide music" instruction in the elementary grades, she urged the board.

The president of the Fairfield-Suisun Unified Teachers Association, Laurel Salerno-White, a chemistry teacher, noted that her science students who are also music students tend to be more creative and better problem-solvers, especially in math, an essential element in chemistry instruction.

After the meeting, Corey said the issue of funding elementary music instruction has come before the board before.

"This isn't the first time we've heard this testimony," she said, adding that the board's ultimate decision will include the weighing of "competing interests," among them busing for athletic events, paying for new technology and upgrades to deteriorating schools.

"Now that there's a little bit of money, everybody wants it," said Corey. "While elementary music is important, the board is going to have to prioritize programs. That's the discussion they're going to be grappling with," including the need for employee compensation.

Also interviewed after the meeting, Wanda Cook, artistic director of the Vacaville-based Young Artists Conservatory of Music, said her program, Music Matters, serves more than 400 students in before- and after-school classes at eight elementary schools across the sprawling district. Students learn guitar, choir, band, strings and music basics. Parents pay $55 for eight hours of music instruction per month.

Whether music instruction is paid for with state taxes or with private money, it will cost, said Cook, who suffered from stuttering as a child but overcame it by singing in choirs and reciting poetry.

She estimated that to bring back the elementary music program -- even at just a few hours per month -- would cost the district nearly $300,000.

Cook was unsure what step the board would take next, but she noted Vacaville Unified's Sylvan Singers program at Will C. Wood High is funded, in part, by the PTA and booster groups, a funding method that may need to be started in Fairfield-Suisun Unified "if it's going to be a robust program."